TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

A subsidiary of multibillion-dollar international pharmaceuticals
company Allergan has agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge of
healthcare fraud and pay $125 million to close the books on criminal and
civil liability claims tied to the subsidiary’s illegal marketing
activities for seven different name-brand prescription drugs.
Warner Chilcott USA Sales LLC (whose connection to Allergen we’ll get
to later) has agreed to plead guilty in federal court to felony
criminal charges of paying kickbacks to physicians to get them to
prescribe the company’s drugs. Warner Chilcott was also caught
manipulating prior authorizations to induce insurance companies to pay
for prescriptions of osteoporosis drug Atelvia that the insurers may not
have otherwise paid for. To top it all of, the company also made
unsubstantiated marketing claims on another osteo med, Actonel.

While the company won’t be going to jail, former Warner Chilcott
President W. Carl Reichel might be. The erstwhile exec was arrested
today in Boston, and according to a newly unsealed indictment [PDF] has been charged with conspiring to pay kickbacks to physicians.

The DOJ accused Warner Chilcott management of directing employees to
violate federal law by paying doctors to prescribe certain medications,
including Asacol (for Chron’s disease), Doryx (an antibiotic used to
treat acne that is at the center of a different legal hurricane), Enablex (for urinary incontinence), Estrace (for hormone treatment), and Loestrin (an oral contraceptive).

This wasn’t a matter of merely slipping the doctors an extra ten-spot or buying them a beer at the doctor bar.

Doctors who prescribed a lot of Warner Chilcott drugs would be hired
as “speakers” for the company, but did very little speaking. And if
these paid mouthpieces let their Warner Chilcott prescription numbers
fall, the company warned them they would not be paid until those
prescriptions increased.

The Warner Chilcott staffers also lied to insurance companies. When a
generic or less-expensive drug is available, many insurers won’t pay
for certain name-brand drugs, including Atelvia, unless a physician
specifically asks for it.

In order to get around this, some company employees would fill out
deceptive prior authorizations for Atelvia using information that was
often inconsistent with the patient’s needs. Some Warner Chilcott
employees actually went so far as to pretend to be physicians in their
representations to the insurers.

Sellers of Actonel were told by Warner Chilcott management to make
unsubstantiated superiority claims about the drug during their sales
pitch. They would tell doctors it was better than competing drugs
because of its supposedly unique “mechanism of action,” employing
misleading visual props to show off purported benefits of the drug that
had not been demonstrated in clinical trials.

For its sins, Warner Chilcott will pay a criminal fine of $22.94
million, plus another $102.06 million to the federal government and the
states who made payments through Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs
based on the company’s bad behavior.

“Doctors’ medical judgment should be based on what is best for the
patient, and not clouded by expensive meals and other pharmaceutical
company kickbacks,” said U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz for the District
of Massachusetts. “Pharmaceutical company executives and employees
should not be involved with treatment decisions or submissions to a
patient’s insurance company.”

Following Warner Chilcott U.S. Sales LLC’s connection to Allergan is a
bit like sitting through the “begat” section of the Book of Genesis.
The sales company is a subsidiary of pharmaceutical manufacturer Warner
Chilcott PLC. Actavis acquired Warner Chilcott in 2013. Just a couple
months ago, Actavis finished its acquisition of Allergan, but chose to
retain that company’s name for the entire operation. Now Allergan and
Pfizer are talking about getting together… it’s messy.

In addition to the pending charges against former president Reichel,
other Warner Chilcott managers have already entered guilty pleas,
including two former district managers, Jeffrey Podolsky and Timothy
Garcia (conspiracy to commit health care fraud, violations of the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA]).

Another former district manager, Landon Eckles, was criminally
charged earlier this month for alleged HIPAA violations relating to the
allegations of falsified prior authorizations.

And last week, Rita Luthra, a physician in Massachusetts, was charged
with, among other things, allegedly accepting free meals and speaker
fees from Warner Chilcott in return for prescribing its osteoporosis
drugs.

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About Me

Apr 2017 - 4.1 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift&. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.